Our Plastic Addiction Helps Fund Fossil Fuels

Our Plastic Addiction Helps Fund Fossil Fuels

"Fossil fuel companies feel threatened by alternative energy—and they’re counting on plastic to save them."

"In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine."

Center for Environmental Law: '"emissions from the plastics sector already rose 15 percent from 2012 to 2018"

"Let’s say you lost your headphones, so you order replacements on Amazon. They arrive in a blue-and-white Amazon-branded plastic envelope. Inside, there’s a clear plastic bag, and inside that, a hard plastic container, and inside that, finally, the headphones themselves, which are mostly plastic."

"There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry. Emerging research has shown how polyethylene releases greenhouse gases when it breaks down and might interfere with the tiny algae plants that play an essential role in helping the oceans absorb excess carbon. Even when recyclable plastics make it to blue bins, much of it ends up in landfills and about 12 percent is burned at an incinerator to generate energy—which vents toxic fumes into nearby communities and more carbon pollution into the atmosphere."

Source

Microbead photo: Andrew Watts bit.ly/2Q0smLf
"image of a plastic microbead from a facewash, taken via scanning electron microscopy; it is about 0.5mm wide. Microbeads are used for their exfoliating properties; many people don’t even know they are there. The major problem is they wash down the drain, pass through sewage works and into the sea and are ingested by marine animals."